Waiting for Godot

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin interviewed by Stone Phillips on NBC's "Dateline" on Friday:

Phillips: You ordered an evacuation, but what was mobilized? I mean were national guard troops in position. Were helicopters standing by? Were buses ready to take people away?

Nagin: No. None of that.

Phillips: None of that?

Nagin: None of that.

Phillips: None of that?

Nagin: None of that.

Phillips: Why is that?

Nagin: I dont know that is question for somebody else.

Plainly, the man be keeping Nagin down--but it wasn't George Bush:

Minutes earlier [on Sunday the 28th], Blanco had been pulled out to take a call from the president, pressed into service by FEMA's Brown to urge a mandatory evacuation. Blanco told him that's just what the mayor would order.

Nagin also announced that the city had set up 10 refuges of last resort, and promised that public buses would pick up stragglers in a dozen locations to take them to the Superdome and other shelters.

But he never mentioned the numbers that had haunted experts for years, the estimated 100,000 city residents without their own transportation. And he never mentioned that the state's comprehensive disaster plan, written in 2000 and posted on a state Web site, called for buses to take people out of the city once the governor declared a state of emergency.

In reality, Nagin's advisers never intended to follow that plan -- and knew many residents would stay behind. "We always knew we did not have the means to evacuate the city," said Terry Ebbert, the sharp-tongued city director of emergency management.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette national security writer Jack Kelly says the MSM unfairly targeted the Bush Administration:

It is settled wisdom among journalists that the federal response to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina was unconscionably slow. . .

But the conventional wisdom is the opposite of the truth.

Jason van Steenwyk is a Florida Army National Guardsman who has been mobilized six times for hurricane relief. He notes that:

"The federal government pretty much met its standard time lines, but the volume of support provided during the 72-96 hour was unprecedented. The federal response here was faster than Hugo, faster than Andrew, faster than Iniki, faster than Francine and Jeanne."

For instance, it took five days for National Guard troops to arrive in strength on the scene in Homestead, Fla. after Hurricane Andrew hit in 2002. But after Katrina, there was a significant National Guard presence in the afflicted region in three.

PoliPundit reader Oak Leaf, of the Army Reserve, just completed twelve days of active duty in support of “Joint Task Force Katrina,” and concludes:

In six days in NOLA I have seen ignorance, paralysis and blatant/shameless corruption, ALL at the “local” level of government. . . The military term FUBAR is an apt description of the “emergency management plan execution” by the NOLA Mayor, the NOLA Police Department, the LA Governor and all of their emergency management appointees.

Newsweek knows it but, in a biased article titled "How Bush Blew It", the magazine buries the lede:

On Tuesday afternoon, Governor Blanco took her second trip to the Superdome and was shocked by the rising tide of desperation there. There didn't seem to be nearly enough buses, boats or helicopters.

Early Wednesday morning, Blanco tried to call Bush. She was transferred around the White House for a while until she ended up on the phone with Fran Townsend, the president's Homeland Security adviser, who tried to reassure her but did not have many specifics. Hours later, Blanco called back and insisted on speaking to the president. When he came on the line, the governor recalled, "I just asked him for help, 'whatever you have'." She asked for 40,000 troops. "I just pulled a number out of the sky," she later told NEWSWEEK.

Let me repeat that: Wednesday. For the memory impaired, hurricane Katrina made landfall 6:00am Monday the 29th. Blanco declared a state of emergency on August 27th, but waited until August 31st before conceding local law enforcement and the Louisiana National Guard had failed.

Under limited circumstances, Bush could have sent troops without an invitation; nonetheless, as previously discussed, Newsweek reports the administration was reluctant to overrule Governor Blanco:

In the inner councils of the Bush administration, there was some talk of gingerly pushing aside the overwhelmed "first responders," the state and local emergency forces, and sending in active-duty troops. But under an 1868 law, federal troops are not allowed to get involved in local law enforcement. The president, it's true, could have invoked the Insurrections Act, the so-called Riot Act. But Rumsfeld's aides say the secretary of Defense was leery of sending in 19-year-old soldiers trained to shoot people in combat to play policemen in an American city, and he believed that National Guardsmen trained as MPs were on the way.

And FEMA, like all Federal disaster programs, is limited by law to the role of "second responder". Imagine the complaints had Bush ignored Louisiana's sovereignty and trampled Blanco's authority? All in all, the overly-bureaucratic FEMA saved many lives and provided needed supplies to the newly homeless.

For Bush bashers and their lap-dog media, it's always "heads we win; tails Bush loses." Even where the facts say otherwise.

(via Right Wing News, Protein Wisdom)